Forgive Me, All the Words to Describe Glass-Blowing Were Illegal

Glass bong, slippery girl, ice cold strap-on & loud, you blinded me
with the science of blowing. I could barely take in the cold smoke

rising between Ontario’s freeze & your glory hole. The geese flew through
the lehr, south. I made my way to the rails, my arms outstretched. Two women,

married or widowed sisters, took my picture by the lip. Look, they said, take us
by the icicle trees & then we’ll take you. The glass branches went ting ting

into a million flowers of refracted light, a double infinity on the color wheel.
The hoarfrost on my Raybans was so thick—once, an American woman

sealed herself in a copper barrel they made just for her fall. Fool,
she said, no one ought ever do that again. She broke

nothing—not pelvis, mandible, knee. Men made of glass were shattered by the Falls:
glass on glass, molten steel falling frozen into the shape of a white narwhal’s twisted horn.

—Jennifer Martelli

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Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Uncanny Valley (Big Table Publishing Company, 2016) and My Tarantella (forthcoming, Bordighera Press). Her work has appeared in Thrush, Carve, Glass Poetry Journal, Cleaver, The Heavy Feather Review, Italian Americana, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Jennifer Martelli has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes and is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is a book reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly as well as the co-curator for The Mom Egg VOX Folio.